Aramco Acquires 49% of HUMAIN, Commits $2.6 Billion in Cash

Dhahran, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Aramco now owns 49% of HUMAIN, the artificial intelligence company of the Public Investment Fund, after the two sides closed the transaction on November 1, with the oil producer putting in AI assets and approximately $2.6 billion (SAR 9.9 billion) in cash this year.

PIF keeps the remaining 51%, so the sovereign wealth fund stays the majority owner. Aramco holds its stake through a wholly owned subsidiary, and the two shareholders will now jointly oversee what they describe as HUMAIN’s ambitious expansion plans, with both contributing AI assets, capabilities and talent to the company.

Aramco’s side of the deal combines money and technology. Beyond the cash, which is due in 2026, it is handing HUMAIN AI, compute and digital assets.

According to the two companies, the deal is meant to speed up HUMAIN’s growth and its effort to offer AI across the whole technology stack, from data centers and high-performance computing through advanced models and applications to solutions for specific industries. They also said it will support HUMAIN’s data center buildout to 2030 and its work helping government bodies and private companies roll out AI at scale.

The headline target is 3 gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030. HUMAIN says it is scaling quickly to meet rising demand for AI compute at home and abroad, and that it wants to become one of the world’s leading exporters of AI.

PIF and Aramco framed the closing as part of Saudi Arabia’s push to develop and deploy advanced data and AI technologies and to draw in talent and investment. PIF, which describes itself as a long-term investor working to drive the Kingdom’s economic transformation and deliver sustainable financial returns, said its AI and digital economy strategy draws on Saudi Arabia’s standing as a globally competitive market built on innovation and capacity building.

The fund linked the partnership to its 2026-2030 strategy, which sets out three aims: closer integration between what PIF calls its economic ecosystems, more room for the private sector, and growing national companies into competitive global players.

Aramco, which presents itself as one of the world’s leading integrated energy and chemicals companies, is expected to use HUMAIN’s AI infrastructure to bring advanced AI into its industrial operations. Aramco and its affiliates stand to gain both as a shareholder and as a strategic partner using HUMAIN’s infrastructure and services, the release said.

The companies added that the partnership offers revenue growth and attractive margins, and should help Aramco earn more from the AI and digital assets it already has. They said it also supports Aramco’s wider strategy and sits alongside its core energy business.

Yazeed A. Al-Humied, Deputy Governor and Head of MENA Investments at PIF, said: “Bringing PIF and Aramco’s AI portfolio of investments together under HUMAIN creates a powerful synergy that fuels talent growth, technological advancement, and intellectual property creation. Fully aligned with PIF’s strategic objectives, this transaction accelerates HUMAIN’s growth into a global leader in the sector, strengthening AI as an enabler of PIF’s six ecosystems and further expanding private sector participation across our portfolio while advancing the development of cutting-edge technologies in Saudi Arabia.”

Amin H. Nasser, Aramco President & CEO, said: “Since 2023, Aramco has achieved $11.3 billion in Technology Realized Value, with a significant portion coming from AI solutions. This partnership with PIF strengthens Aramco’s position as a global technology leader and AI powerhouse, while laying the foundation for localizing the AI industry and enabling faster, more integrated, and scalable deployment of AI systems. AI will therefore play a vital role in the future of business. We are delighted to collaborate with PIF to help shape the future of AI regionally and globally.”

Nasser has been putting figures on Aramco’s AI work for some time. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, he said Aramco expected its technology realized value to reach $3 billion to $5 billion in 2025, with more than half of that tied to AI applications.

The closing completes a process that began a year ago. On October 28, 2025, PIF and Aramco signed a non-binding term sheet for Aramco to take what was then called a significant minority stake, without a percentage. That term sheet depended on definitive agreements and regulatory approvals, and PIF had already moved the Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI), which it wholly owned, into HUMAIN.

PIF launched HUMAIN in May 2025. The company is building capabilities across four areas: next-generation data centers, hyper-performance infrastructure and cloud platforms, advanced AI models, and AI solutions. Its models include ALLaM, which Aramco describes as one of the world’s most powerful multimodal Arabic large language models (LLMs).

Its infrastructure plans are already drawing international customers. In October, HUMAIN and DataVolt signed a preliminary framework with Nebius under which the Nasdaq-listed AI cloud provider could take up to 50 megawatts at their planned campus in NEOM’s Oxagon, with capacity coming online in phases from the fourth quarter of 2027.

With Aramco as a 49% owner, HUMAIN could gain one of the world’s largest industrial companies as a shareholder and potential user of its services, while the cash may help fund its data center buildout. Aramco’s cash contribution of approximately $2.6 billion is scheduled for 2026, four years ahead of HUMAIN’s 3 gigawatt target date.